Any Book Worth Reading Is Worth Reading at Least Twice

A lot of business pundits and bloggers like to brag about how many books they read, and I have been guilty of that myself. For many years I’ve taken pride in the quantity of books I’ve read, in some years averaging up to two books per week. I’ve learned a lot of useful stuff through all that reading, but I also know that the vast majority of my reading has probably gone completely to waste.

The thought struck me a couple of weeks ago when my nephew mentioned a book he is reading, Sea Power by Admiral James Stavridis. I said, “Yeah, that’s a good book, I read it a few months ago.” Then I tried to reflect what specifically I had learned from it, and it was difficult to recall more than just a few scattered observations. There are even some books—and I hate to publicly admit this—that I’ve bought more than once, because I forgot that I had read them several years before!

On the other hand, there are many books that I’ve read more than once, either in their entirety or by having repeatedly used them as a reference, and I recall and use most of what’s important in those books. That’s why I’ve decided that any book worth reading is worth reading at least twice.

In lean thinking terms, there is a huge amount of waste in the reading that I’ve done, and I suspect yours as well. There are at least three forms of waste. The first is what I’ve already described: the forgetting curve ensures that I lose a lot of the valuable knowledge I do acquire.

Second, especially for difficult material, it’s unlikely that I got the full meaning the author was putting across. For a book to be worth reading, it should challenge your thinking in some way, and that means that it should not be easy to pick up its depth and nuance in a single pass through it. If a very smart and wise person said something important to you, you would likely think about it, ask questions, clarify, etc. and that is something you can do with a book by re-reading. When it’s worthwhile and challenging, reading is not enough: you have to study it.

Third, I’ve wasted a lot of time reading material that was not worth recalling. The corollary to this rule, of course, is that if the book is not worth reading, it’s silly to waste any time finishing it.

Besides reducing waste, one more important reason to re-read a book is that, if you let enough time pass between readings, you may be a different person in many ways the second time around. You’ve learned more, acquired new and different knowledge structures, and will probably understand it differently when you read it again. It’s especially fascinating at times to encounter passages I’ve highlighted or read my own comments in the margins, and wonder what I was thinking at the time!

So, read that worthwhile book twice at first to ensure that you’ve squeezed the value out of it, then set it aside and pick it up again after some time has passed. I’m doing that right now with Tom Morris’ book, If Aristotle Ran General Motors, which I read twenty years ago. I can’t wait to see how the 60 year old me reads it differently than the 40 year old version.

And it doesn’t apply just to non-fiction. I’ve gotten a ton of enjoyment from reading novels more than once. It’s amazing how much of the story you only semi-remember, and it’s fascinating to pick up on different details on the second or even third pass. A lot of people watch movies multiple times, so why not books, which are even more densely packed? I have read all 20 of Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander series three times, and I know I’m not done with them.

Which books have you found worth reading recently? When will you re-read them?